It is March 5th. Welcome to Episode 64 of History in a Year. Today, the dream of the Northwest Passage dies on top of a mountain. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark push the Corps of Discovery deep into the terrifying unknown of the American West. We witness a near-disaster on the river where Sacagawea saves the expedition’s most priceless cargo, and the agonizing, bloody, 18-mile portage around the Great Falls of the Missouri. Finally, as starvation sets in, we explore the desperate search for the Shoshone tribe, leading to one of the most incredible, movie-like coincidences in recorded history.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is March 5th. Welcome to Episode 64. Yesterday, the Corps of Discovery said goodbye to their massive keelboat. They sent it back to Thomas Jefferson, packed with maps and a live prairie dog.
LEAH:
It is now the spring of 1805. Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and about thirty men are pushing forward in smaller wooden canoes. They are leaving the map completely behind and heading straight for the Rocky Mountains.
STEPHEN:
And almost immediately, they run into the true apex predator of the American West.
LEAH:
The Grizzly Bear.
STEPHEN:
The Native Americans had warned Lewis and Clark about the grizzly. But the Americans, with their cutting-edge rifles, were incredibly arrogant. Lewis actually wrote in his journal that the Native Americans were only afraid of the bears because they used bows and arrows. He thought American lead would easily take them down.
LEAH:
He was very, very wrong.
STEPHEN:
In early May, they encountered their first full-grown male grizzly. Six men fired their rifles directly into the bear’s chest and lungs.
LEAH:
The bear didn’t even flinch. It roared and charged them. The men had to drop their empty guns, sprint for the river, and literally jump off a twenty-foot cliff into the water to escape. The bear followed them in, and it took a final shot to the head from a man standing on the shore to finally kill it.
STEPHEN:
Lewis quickly changed his tune. He wrote that he “would rather fight two Indians than one bear.” From that day on, no one was allowed to walk alone on the shore.
LEAH:
But the grizzly bears were nothing compared to the danger of the river itself. On May 14, 1805, the entire expedition was nearly destroyed in a matter of seconds.
STEPHEN:
It happened in the “white pirogue.” This was their most important boat. It held all of their scientific instruments, all of their medicine, the gunpowder, and most importantly, the irreplaceable journals where they were drawing the maps. If that boat sank, the mission was over.
LEAH:
And the man steering that boat on this particular day was Sacagawea’s husband, the French-Canadian trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau.
STEPHEN:
Charbonneau was a terrible sailor. Suddenly, a violent squall of wind hit the river. The sail caught the wind, and the boat violently tipped onto its side.
LEAH:
Instead of steering into the wind to right the boat, Charbonneau completely panicked. He dropped the tiller, started screaming in French, and cried to God for mercy.
STEPHEN:
The boat was filling with water. Packages of irreplaceable medicine and the journals were washing overboard. The navigator in the bow of the boat had to threaten to shoot Charbonneau in the head just to get him to grab the tiller again.
LEAH:
But while Charbonneau was having a meltdown, his teenage wife, Sacagawea, remained completely calm.
STEPHEN:
With her baby strapped to her back, sitting in water up to her waist, Sacagawea reached out into the violent current and calmly grabbed every single package, journal, and instrument that floated past her.
LEAH:
She saved the expedition. Lewis and Clark praised her immense fortitude in their journals, while essentially calling her husband a useless coward.
STEPHEN:
The Corps survived the squall, but the river was about to throw its greatest obstacle at them. In June, Meriwether Lewis was walking ahead of the boats when he heard a massive, roaring sound in the distance.
LEAH:
He had found the Great Falls of the Missouri River.
STEPHEN:
It was a breathtaking, spectacular sight. But for Lewis and Clark, it was an absolute nightmare. Because they couldn’t take boats up a waterfall. They had to carry everything around it.
LEAH:
And it wasn’t just one waterfall. It was a series of five massive falls stretching over 18 miles.
STEPHEN:
This begins the infamous portage around the Great Falls. It took them an agonizing month to travel 18 miles.
LEAH:
They had to cut down cottonwood trees to make crude wooden wheels. They put the massive wooden canoes on these wheels and dragged them across the dry, cracked prairie.
STEPHEN:
The heat was over 90 degrees. Massive hailstorms battered them, knocking men unconscious. But the worst part was the prickly pear cactus.
LEAH:
The ground was covered in it. The thorns pierced right through their thin leather moccasins. The men were literally leaving bloody footprints in the dirt as they dragged these multi-ton boats.
STEPHEN:
By mid-July, they finally got the boats back in the water above the falls. But a dark realization was starting to set in.
LEAH:
Thomas Jefferson had promised them that the Rocky Mountains were just a single, small ridge. He thought they could just carry their boats over it in a day or two and hit a river flowing down to the Pacific.
STEPHEN:
On August 12, 1805, Meriwether Lewis hiked up to the top of the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass. He stood at the very top of the ridge, expecting to look down and see the Pacific Ocean, or at least a flat plain leading to it.
LEAH:
Instead, he looked west. And all he saw were more mountains.
STEPHEN:
Endless, jagged, snow-capped peaks stretching as far as the eye could see. It was the Bitterroot Range.
LEAH:
The dream of the Northwest Passage died right there on that mountain. There was no direct water route across the continent.
STEPHEN:
Lewis realized they were in massive trouble. Winter was coming again. They couldn’t take boats over these mountains. If they didn’t find horses immediately, they were going to freeze and starve to death.
LEAH:
They desperately needed to find the Shoshone tribe.
STEPHEN:
Lewis took a small scouting party ahead of the main group. After days of searching, he finally stumbled upon a group of Shoshone warriors. Using sign language and offering gifts, Lewis convinced their chief to come back with him to the river to meet the rest of the expedition.
LEAH:
The chief’s name was Cameahwait.
STEPHEN:
Lewis, Chief Cameahwait, and his warriors arrived at the riverbank on August 17, 1805. William Clark and the main body of the expedition—including Sacagawea—were waiting for them.
LEAH:
What happened next is so incredible that if you put it in a Hollywood movie, the audience would say it was too unrealistic.
STEPHEN:
Sacagawea was called into the command tent to translate for Lewis and Clark. She sat down, looked across the fire at Chief Cameahwait… and completely broke down in tears.
LEAH:
She jumped up, ran across the tent, and threw her blanket over the Chief’s head, sobbing hysterically.
STEPHEN:
Chief Cameahwait was her brother.
LEAH:
Remember, Sacagawea had been kidnapped by a raiding party when she was 12 years old. She had been taken hundreds of miles away. She hadn’t seen her family in five years.
STEPHEN:
And out of the millions of square miles of the American West, the exact Native American tribe that Lewis and Clark desperately needed help from happened to be led by her long-lost, biological brother.
LEAH:
It is one of the most stunning coincidences in recorded history.
STEPHEN:
With the emotional reunion complete, the negotiations were incredibly easy. Chief Cameahwait gave the Americans all the horses they needed. He provided them with a guide, an older man they nicknamed “Old Toby,” to show them the way through the mountains.
LEAH:
But even with horses and a guide, the crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains would push the Corps of Discovery to the absolute brink of human endurance.
STEPHEN:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 65. Ocean in View. We follow the Corps through the freezing, starving nightmare of the Lolo Trail. We watch them resort to eating candles and their own pack horses just to survive. And finally, we stand with them on the shores of the Pacific Ocean as they achieve the impossible.
LEAH:
I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.